Little Burgundy as seen by Andrew Jackson

“I found that kind of an intriguing way to juxtapose space against the more intimate portraits, revealing of people to the cameras. The thing which I need to do is to humanize that individual and create, I guess, pathways where the viewer can find a commonality and a sense of shared humanity within them.”
– Andrew Jackson

Evolving Montreal

Evolving Montreal is a series of commissions initiated by the McCord Stewart Museum to support documentary photography projects that capture the transformation of neighbourhoods from unique points of view. After Robert Walker and Joannie Lafrenière, who photographed Griffintown and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve respectively, the Museum has selected Andrew Jackson for the third installment of the series.

For his commission, Jackson chose to document the changes occurring in Little Burgundy, considered the cradle of Montreal’s Black anglophone community. Over a period of about two years, the photographer recorded some of the key sites and individuals that compose Little Burgundy’s Black community today. Jackson’s personal interpretation of the commission extends the purview of Evolving Montreal by exploring the notion of neighbourhood as a space that is at once physical and conceptual.

Visit the exhibition Little Burgundy – Evolving Montreal at the McCord Stewart Museum from February 21, 2025 to September 28, 2025.

Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson is a British-Canadian photographer based in Montreal since 2019. His practice is developed at the intersection of photography and text and, most recently, focuses on notions of family, transnational migration, displacement, trauma and collective memory. He recently published the monograph From a Small Island, the first chapter of his ongoing series Across the Sea Is a Shore, a collection of works that explore the intergenerational legacies of migration from the Caribbean to the UK.

Andrew Jackson has a history of developing platforms that provide opportunities for traditionally excluded groups to engage with photography. In 2021 he created a public engagement project in collaboration with the DESTA Black Youth Network, located in Little Burgundy, which resulted in a group exhibition shown at the PHI Foundation. His works are held in public collections that include the United Kingdom’s Government Art Collection, the Permanent Collection of the New Art Gallery Walsall and the Autograph ABP and Light Work collections. His photographs have also appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, the Financial Times and The New Statesman.

Videographer : Tomi Grgicevic © McCord Stewart Museum, 2025